


this place was a shelter

by mattmurdck



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Depression, F/M, Guilt, Holocaust flashbacks, M/M, Trauma, WIP
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-19
Updated: 2013-10-19
Packaged: 2017-12-29 21:05:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1010095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mattmurdck/pseuds/mattmurdck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year after their separation on the beaches of Cuba, Erik and Charles have carved out different paths for themselves. But after a terrible accident in which Raven, the one person tying them together, is killed, they find each other once again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this place was a shelter

_Metal is his mistress, his alpha and omega, the one true guiding purpose in his life. It has stripped him of individuality, replaced his spine with steel, his blood and bones with iron bonds. It is a greedy, jealous lover; with golden hands it takes, one by one, those that dare give him affection, denying his call when he cries out for his God-forsaken power, clanging in his ears when all he desires is silence._

_Once, he thought himself its master, but the bullets proved him wrong. One, two, three: three bullets nestled into soft, pliant bodies. Three bullets widening the great chasm between him and the other, between peace and plunder, pleasure and pain. But the numbers branded soot-black on the inside of his left arm remind him that there is no pleasure for a man like him._

_One, two, three. Mother, Charles... Raven._

_He would never forget her screams._

* * *

 

It had all gone so smoothly – or as smoothly as his life could have gone after the day that changed everything. On that beach in Cuba, Erik Lehnsherr had made a decision that would impact his life every single day until he died, a decision that would rest heavy on his heart with purpose and the cold tinge of mourning. He had lost something incalculable that day, but while his best friend stood no longer, Erik kept walking on his two strong feet, refusing his knees the honor of shaking, denying his fists the right to uncurl. To fight was to live, to carve out existence was to breathe. And through it all, he was not alone.

Until he was.

He wore blame openly, wore it like a heart on his sleeve, free for anyone to see and cut and harm. He wore it like a cloak heavy around his shoulders, like armor that locked from the outside, like a scar he didn't dare hide. Erik Lehnsherr felt for all the world a monster. All those years in Auschwitz where he had been known only by the number tattooed on his wrist, by his job as a Sonderkommando digging through the burnt remains of his brethren for gold teeth and wedding rings, he had never felt so much self-hatred as he did now. _“You are an exquisite creature, Raven. All your life, the world has tried to tame you. It's time for you to be free”_ was what he had whispered into her ear after their love-making, fingers trailing over her scaled cerulean flesh, but now she was dead and it was his fault. The bullet that had twitched beneath his power and bled her out was now a flattened ring around his finger, a banded reminder of his failure to save those that he loved. It was a mocking jape from God that the very thing that had harmed those he loved the most had been a small piece of scrap metal that he could control at the flick of the finger. But in the moments when his incredible power was most needed, he had stumbled and faltered; he had failed.

And now he was paying the price and when he bit back loneliness, it tasted like blood.

* * *

 

_Her body lay flickering cream, blue, sallow, brilliant, beautiful, blue. Beneath her pooled scarlet and sticky; the bullet was trapped between two lungs expanding, struggling, gasping for breath. His hands were outstretched in a prayer and the web of the world twitched, tugged against his power. He could feel it there, hard and knotted against her breast, rattling with every inhale. When she grasped his hand, her fingers trembled, lips parted, her body trying desperately to rearrange, to negate the damage, to fight against time and space but it was too late._

_She had been unprepared, taken unawares. Eagerness and fear choked Erik's throat and his wrist jerked, the bullet pulling free of its bone prison. It wasn't until it rested in his hand, blood-soaked, that he knew his mistake. The blood poured faster, a torrent, he was drowning in it._

_Raven only touched his cheek, smearing a stain against his lips with a wayward thumb. “Tell Charles I love him,” she said, and he could hear death chasing her tongue, could not stop the flow even as he pressed his palms against her chest. Helpless, futile. “I love you.”_

_Darkness crept in around the edges of his vision like a plague. When his consciousness next took over, he was several miles away with dirt on his hands and blood dried on his shirt, blood that was not his own. He was alone. Outside of the abandoned building, Raven's corpse began to rot beneath the ground._

_It was here that Charles finally found him, two weeks later._

* * *

 

Their months at each other's side, with the small rag-tag group of mutants that he fondly called _brothers_ , had been bliss. Together, the first incarnation of the Brotherhood dug out their claim in the ever-changing world that denied them, carved out the name pariah on their chest and wore their scars with pride, and never dared to hide their stripes from the humans that wanted to skin their hides. Finally, after nearly a year of build up, they were going to do it – they were going to make the humans learn about their superiors. But the bullet had hit her even while wearing another's skin and Erik, in his anxiety, hands trembling as he held her, could not hold the piece of steel steady. Just like with his mother, in the heat of the moment his mutation failed him. All of her short life, she had been so strong, her skin changing from blue to ivory to steel, but in the last moments of her life, tears stained her yellow eyes, and she had broke.

It was all his fault.

And so he ran.

It felt like he had been running all his life. Erik had ran away from Auschwitz and into the embrace of anonymity; he had ran head-first into a wash of cold blood that he would never scrub from his hands, Nazi gold, Nazi deaths; he had ran away from Charles who stood with arms outstretched and into the direct line of sight for missiles, Erik begging them to hit home and give him a reason to make the world burn. And now, with another mistake clouding his mind, he ran once more, away from his brothers and sisters and into the darkness that he knew would welcome him. For the first few days, he wore the helmet – painted red to remind him of the blood of his people, the blood of the lamb, both Jew and mutant, that had been slain unrighteously – constantly, refusing to take it off for fear of being found. Somehow he knew, could feel it prickle down his spine, that Charles was searching for him. The longing to remove the helmet that cast a wall between them and let those bricks crumble was extreme, but he held out.

But not for long.

Erik Lehnsherr was a broken man. The name Magneto, the name that Raven had given him and he had adopted, fell flat to his ears but even his birth name sounded wrong. It sounded incorrect, the name of someone without scars on his back and the number of death branded onto his arm. The memories of his months spent at the Xavier mansion crept into his dreams, hallucinations in his sleep-deprived days, locked away in a run-down house in northern New York. No one could find him there, unless he wanted them to.

Eventually, his final walls broke and he pulled off the helmet and sat there, waiting. The past few weeks had worried lines in his face, aging him beyond his years, and the first tinges of grey colored his temples. In his lap, the red helmet sat, nestled in the crook of his crossed legs. How long he sat there, he did not know, for he kept his eyes closed and no pangs of hunger interrupted his steady stream of consciousness. More than anything, he was waiting – for time to slow to a stop, for God to strike him down, for Satan to crawl from the fissures in the earth and swallow him whole. For someone to find him. For forgiveness to brush a kiss over his brow. For Charles.

**Author's Note:**

> This will probably be multi-chapter and the following chapters will be significantly longer. I can't decide yet if I want the POV to remain Erik's or switch to Charles occasionally. If you have any suggestions, drop a comment.


End file.
